Since his Jan. 2 inauguration, Mayor Vaughn D. Spencer has awarded six outside consulting contracts, worth a total of $176,000, to give him more people to carry out his agendas.

All of these contracts circumvented the city's normal contract-awarding process; all of them bypassed City Council; all but one of them involved members of his campaign and/or transition committees; and one was for the services of a media manager, who council had previously rejected for a city job.

Council members' responses have ranged from livid to concerned. Several claim it's all political patronage for those who got Spencer elected, and several say the city could better use the money to hire a badly needed police officer or firefighter.

But Spencer defends the contracts, saying they give him the extra help the administration needs and are the only way the city can plan how to do a better job, which he defines as saving money or raising revenue without increasing tax rates.

Without that effort, he said, the city will never have enough money for more police or firefighters.

The contracts range from $20,000 to United Community Services to recruit and train 10 employees for the city recycling operations, to $48,000 to Carole Snyder, a retired Met-Ed human resources chief, to recruit and vet candidates for the vacant job of city human resources manager and then to mentor the winner.

There's also $24,500 to local businessman Scott G. Hoh, who was rejected by council as interim managing director, to run Spencer's Initiative Compliance Committee, which meets once a week.

A $24,000 contract went to Fleck Consulting, owned by Spencer's political consultant Michael Fleck, to implement five programs the mayor wants.

Another $24,000 contract went to Fleck Consulting to pay the salary and benefits of city media manager Michael Dee.

And there's the $35,500 contract to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance to advise the city on the growing recycling industry.

The city's procurement process requires that it seek proposals for any consulting job and get council approval.

Those rules also forbid the city from awarding a contract to anyone who donated directly or indirectly to city election campaigns. Friends of Mike Fleck, an Easton councilman, gave Spencer's campaign $1,500.

However, the managing director is allowed to waive the rules in certain cases, which eliminates the request for proposals and campaign donation rules.

Until last month, city codes gave the mayor the power to spend money outside the budget, up to $50,000, without council approval.

After the Snyder and Institute contracts, council voted to lower the spending limit to $25,000, then overrode Spencer's veto of that bill. That was followed by the two Fleck contracts and the payment for Hoh, who earlier had been slated to get $40,000 for the committee job.

Those are the outsiders.

The mayor's office also got an extra assistant to work on similar plans, for an extra $55,000 and benefits.

Asked if the total bill of more than $230,000 for the extra help will bring more than that in new revenue or savings, Spencer said he believes it will.

"It remains to be seen what the numbers will be," he said. "We'll see how well this works. Come budget time, we'll see whether this was a successful venture."

Asked whether the contracts were political patronage, he responded, "I don't think they'd tell you they think it's much of a reward."

But he said he's worked with these people in the past and they share the same vision.

"I know their work; they're qualified," he said. "Show me any mayor, any governor or any president who doesn't bring on people involved in the campaign. They know them and what they bring.

"Yes, these are people who have been supportive, but they also bring something to the table."

Questioned about waiving the procurement rules, he said he just followed the recommendations of the city's former Managing Director Carl E. Geffken, who left in March to take a county job. Spencer acknowledged the Michael Dee contract was done after Geffken, and the mayor himself waived the rules.

Still, he said, the goal is to change the way the city operates to cut costs and generate more revenue without hiking taxes.

"That's the idea, how do we do a better job," he said. "We can't cut anymore, and we can't tax much more."

He said former Mayor Tom McMahon complained that he didn't have the manpower either to plan any changes.

Spencer said that unless the city can change how much money is available, without raising taxes, it won't be able to hire more police or firefighters next year.

"Of course that was the idea, to get more police on the street," he said. "My job is to create a clean and safe city. Ultimately, we want to have police numbers that the chief feels good about."

Spencer said all cities in Pennsylvania's Act 47 financial recovery program, as Reading is, are facing the same financial problems.